New Orleans was designed by its early settlers in 1721 as a Cartesian grid. You know it as the famous French Quarter or Vieux Carré. Such grids are named for the Cartesian coordinate system we learned to use in algebra or geometry class, perpendicular X and Y axes, used to measure units of distance on a plane. The invention of René Descartes (1596–1650), these grids reflect his rationalism, the view that reason, not embodied or empirical experience, is the only source and certain test of knowledge. William Penn used a similar grid in 1682 in selling Philadelphia as an urban paradise where industry would thrive in the newly settled wilderness. And just as the massive buildings of Italian Rationalist (i.e., Fascist) architecture express authoritarian control, so, too, Cartesian grids implicitly say: Someone is in charge here. We’ve got this. Trust us.
As part of Milan's ongoing vision of bicycle-friendly highways, the Metropolitan Council of Milanhas approved its Biciplan “Cambio” project, a new transportation system that introduces "super-cycle" corridors across the urban fabric, prioritizing cycling, environmental protection, safety, and wellbeing. The project aims to compliment existing cycle paths with 750 kilometers of new corridors that will connect the city's 133 communes with its wider metropolitan area, and increase the amount of bicycle trips and reach by 10% internally and 20% on a greater scale.
The concept of an “ideal city” is something that is often talked about today, as we look towards the future and think about what aspects of urban life we feel are most important for residents to thrive in a healthy community. However, ideal cities were conceived during the Italian Renaissance, as planners and architects prioritized rationale in their designs focusing on human values, urban capacities, and the recursive waves of cultural and artistic revolutions that influenced large-scale planning schemes.
Biodiversity has become ubiquitous in project descriptions as yet another mark of the design's environmental accomplishments. The increasing focus on sustainability, the standard inspired by the UN Sustainable Development Goals, prompts a deeper understanding of what biodiversity in urban environments means and how can architecture and urban design actively contribute to it. With species extinction rates soaring and urbanization over natural land continuing, cities become an essential factor in sustaining biodiversity, and the following explores how the built environment can foster multi-species habitats.
The year 2021 has been a turbulent one –coronavirus rages on, and the design and construction industries have been forced to keep adapting two years into a global pandemic. As virtual methods of working and communicating continue to be tweaked and honed, a plethora of virtual events has meant that architectural discourse outside the western canon and Eurocentric gaze, in a small way, has been able to claim space front and center in the global architectural conversation.
The city of Budapest, though Budapest Development Agency (BFK), launched an international design competition this autumn for the comprehensive renewal of the Budapest Nyugati Railway Station and its surroundings. The initiative seeks to expand the train station's capacity in order to reach Budapest's railway transport goals of doubling the number of trains on the suburban and metropolitan network. After an initial phase that attracted 36 participants, 12 practices were shortlisted for the second round of the competition, among which are Benthem Crouwel Architects, Grimshaw Architects, Zaha Hadid Architects, Foster + Partners, Kengo Kuma & Associates and Sweco.
Czech practices UNIT Architekti, A69 - Architekti, and British firm Marko & Placemakersproposetransforming the largest brownfield site neighbouring Prague's historic city centre into a dynamic urban hub. The masterplan, selected within a 2-stage international competition comprising 57 entries, envisions "a multifunctional urban framework" that mediates the infrastructural complexity of the site, establishing a new identity for the area.
Ronald Lu & Partners designed a new transit-oriented development (TOD) in Shenzhen, reshaping a former industrial zone near Chiwan Port. The project builds on the firm's extensive experience with green architecture and TODs, proposing a biophilic development that restores nature in the area. Featuring a mixture of residential, business, commercial, and educational facilities, the design is set to become a key urban environment within the Greater Bay Area connecting Guangdong Province, Hong Kong and Macau.
KCAP revealed its competition-winning design for the Keflavík Airport Area Strategic Masterplan in Iceland, comprising an area of 55 square kilometres around the country’s global aviation hub. Developed together with Felixx Landscape Architects & Planners, Kanon Arkitektar and a multidisciplinary team of professionals across a wide range of fields, the masterplan proposes a “collaborative development between public and private sectors”, seeking to transform specific areas around the airport into the hallmarks of the country’s sustainability and economic strategies.
København (Copenhagen), the capital of Denmark, is at the forefront of many landscape architects and planners’ minds for both its groundbreaking moves towards sustainability and cutting-edge public spaces, bicycle culture, architecture, and food scenes. Having spent a significant amount of time in the city over the last decade, I’ve had the opportunity to begin to get to know the city and its people. One of the striking things about the city, perceptible in even my time there, is its continued trajectory of improvement. A chorus of people working diligently for decades to optimize the city for the everyday lives of its inhabitants have been laying the groundwork for what is possible today.
https://www.archdaily.com/973247/learning-from-copenhagen-a-focus-on-everyday-lifeJohn Bela
The 2021 edition of Dutch Design Week (DDW) that took place in October in Eindhoven brought forward a range of explorations and innovative ideas that have the potential of shaping a positive future in the direction of less waste and sustainable consumption. As part of the programme, the Future Cities talk discussed the challenges faced by urban environments and addressed the potential of carefully considered inward growth and densification in tackling housing shortage and achieving sustainable development.
In this episode of Design and the City - a podcast by reSITE on how to make cities more liveable – scholar, writer and consultant Tim Gill, author of Urban Playground: How Child-Friendly Planning and Design Can Save Cities, talks about the importance of designing cities that can foster play and empower children autonomy, as a way of creating inclusive urban environments fit for all ages and abilities. Gill argues for enhancing children's everyday freedom and discusses his research into ideas and principles that would make neighbourhoods rich in experiences in possibilities, which he defines as child-friendly urban planning.
The city of Parishas announced that it will be investing €250 million to upgrade its cycling infrastructure and expand its network of bike lanes with aims of becoming “100% cyclable”. The French capital's investment comes through Bike Plan, a 5-year-long urban project that will reinforce the presence of bikes and provide safe and well connected routes for passengers and pedestrians.
ADUs or accessory dwelling unit, a word mostly used by architects, is "a smaller, independent residential unit located on the same lot as a stand-alone single-family home" according to the American Planning Association. They can be converted spaces of existing houses, additions, or new stand-alone structures. In this piece, author Walter explores the recent policies in California that seek to reduce the shortage of housing.
Urban environments are in a constant process of social evolution, political and economic transformation. Attached to the idea of urban renewal is gentrification, a complex phenomenon circumscribing a variety of issues, from the improvement of the built environment and strengthening the local economy to displacement and demographic change. On the one hand, redevelopment means revitalizing neighbourhoods, improving the built environment and infrastructure and boosting the local economy, and on the other hand, gentrification drives up property prices and cost of living, forcing out low-income communities. Is the displacement of local communities a "collateral damage" of urban development? Does redevelopment intrinsically drive gentrification, and can urban environments be revitalized more ethically?
In this Editor's Talk edition, editors from Argentina, Lebanon, Brasil, Chile, Tanzania share their views on gentrification.
UNStudio has revealed the design for Project H1, a tech-assisted masterplan for a 10-minute neighbourhood in Seoul that would cater to the digital economy. The project transforms an industrial site and railyard into a dense mixed-use urban environment containing all the amenities of contemporary living within a 10-minute walk. This pedestrian-friendly, diverse neighbourhood is complemented by a digital infrastructure developed by UNSense, providing a framework for managing energy production and consumption, local food production, and the shared use of communal spaces.
The 15-minute city urban theory receives the 2021 Obel Prize in recognition of the concept's value for creating sustainable and people-centric urban environments. First coined in 2016 by Sorbonne professor Carlos Moreno, the term defines a highly flexible urban model that ensures all citizens can access daily needs within a 15-minute distance, thus breaking the hegemony of the car and reintroducing the qualities of historic cities within contemporary urban planning.
In this week's reprint from the Architect's Newspaper, author Patrick Sisson tackles the implication and participation of communities in New York in shaping their built environment, especially their waterfront. He also asks about the roles of representation and if "the city’s community boards and Uniform Land Use Review Procedure act more like gatekeepers than catalysts for equitable development?" especially that a lot of new developments are labeled as housing projects.
